


How to Break a Champagne Bottle

by angelinthecity



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: Champagne, Drunken Kissing, M/M, Mutual Pining, New Year's Eve, New Year's Kiss, New York City
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 05:33:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17238350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelinthecity/pseuds/angelinthecity
Summary: Armie is in New York for work and would have spent New Year’s Eve alone, if Timmy hadn’t invited him along to a friend’s party. The problem is, it’s almost midnight and neither of them has anyone to kiss.





	How to Break a Champagne Bottle

**Author's Note:**

> Entirely fictional.

“ _Ten minutes_!” someone shouted over the noises at the party.

“Oh Christ, that’s my cue, I better go hide,” Armie said. “Your friend’s mother already joked about kissing me at midnight when she welcomed me at the door and saw that I arrived alone.”

Timmy laughed. “Ha, better you than me. She’s said that to me for the past five New Years. I’ve never stayed to find out if she was kidding or not.”

“You should’ve warned me about that when you invited me to tag along.”

“I thought you liked older women,” Timmy grinned.

“Fuck you, very funny. Isn’t she like sixty?”

“Besides, I couldn’t take my chances that you wouldn’t come. God knows where you would’ve ended up if you had spent New Year’s alone in the city,” Timmy added, a drink in one hand and patting Armie’s chest with the other.

The decibel levels at Timmy’s friend’s annual New Year’s Eve party had continually increased towards midnight along with every opened bottle of champagne, and by now they were at a point where you basically had to talk into someone’s ear if you wanted them to hear you. But that’s what you got if you crammed too many people in one small New York apartment – albeit an upscale one, as it actually belonged to Timmy’s friend’s well-off parents, but still, it was very New York-sized.

Maybe it had been quieter earlier but Armie had arrived late. The already-scouted locations for his magazine photoshoot hadn’t worked because it was so cold, and the entire team had been forced to transfer indoors, which meant several extra hours of work on a day when people were already anxious to leave early to go to their parties.

Armie hadn’t known anyone at the party besides Timmy, and meeting new people in this noise, while everyone else already knew each other, had been a challenge he had been unwilling to take on after the long day.

So he had just trailed behind Timmy while he had flitted around talking to all his friends. At first, Timmy had simply kept patting Armie’s back when he had introduced him to them – Armie liked that he always used the words _my_ _friend_ instead of mentioning anything about them having done a movie together  _–_ but after each successive drink, Timmy had gotten handsier. First just letting his hand stay on Armie’s shoulder longer than necessary, then starting to let it drop to the small of his back.

Armie hadn’t minded; Timmy always got more affectionate when he was drinking. He had only started to pay real attention when Timmy had slipped his hand inside Armie’s jacket and around his waist when they were talking to people. He had looked at Timmy inquisitively at that point and Timmy had quickly pulled his hand back with a nervous laugh.

Armie had wanted to tell him that that wasn’t what he had meant, that he had just been amused, but decided it didn’t really matter in the end. So instead, he had just kept looking at Timmy: his expressions when he told his friends a story; his lips and how they curved into a laugh when someone replied with something funny; his hands gesturing wildly when he got excited.

_“Eight minutes!”_

“Oh Jesus, I think she’s already making her way to me.”

Armie had a clear view over people’s heads and saw the silver-gray, coiffed head of their hostess moving towards them through the crowd. He knew that given his height, he was an easy target to find.

Timmy craned his neck, trying to spot his friend’s eager mother. “Really? She is? Do we need to escape for real?”

“I don’t know if there is an escape,” Armie groaned. “It’s not like we can just leave.”

“No, but we can–“ Timmy grabbed him by the arm. “Just come with me.”

Timmy pushed through the crowd briskly in the opposite direction and Armie followed him, ducking his head. He didn’t know where they were headed, so he grabbed a bottle of champagne with him from one of the tables, just in case. They might not have access to drinks at the location of their exile.

Timmy led them to the room at the end of the hallway.

“Should we really be here? In your friend’s old bedroom?” Armie asked as he eyed the posters on the walls and the bed on which the guests’ coats had been piled up.

Timmy didn’t answer him but instead, pushed the curtains aside, deftly opened the window and climbed out of it onto the fire escape. It looked like it wasn’t his first time.

“Come on, quickly, before she gets here. We used to smoke here all the time when we were in high school and she never found us.”

Remembering how cold it had been outside, Armie grabbed two coats from the top of the pile before following Timmy into the night air.

Timmy had definitely made it look easier, but Armie managed to somehow maneuver himself out of the narrow window with the bottle still in one hand, the coats in the other. To cover their tracks, he arranged the curtains behind him to hide the open window.

Once on the fire escape, Armie showed Timmy the champagne: “I come bearing gifts.”

He also offered Timmy a choice between a brown sheepskin jacket and a long, green parka – neither of which was their own.

“Oh, genius, man.” Timmy’s eyes lit up and he happily wrapped himself up in the sheepskin jacket, while Armie opened the champagne with a loud pop and then handed him the bottle.

“Here, you do the honors. There are no glasses, though.”

“Not a problem.”

Timmy drank straight from the bottle as he watched Armie squeeze himself into the parka. The sleeves were obviously too short and there was no way for him to be able to zip it up.

_“Four minutes!”_

“Are you sure you don’t want to go back there? There’s still time,” Timmy smirked as he handed the bottle back to Armie.

Armie took a big gulp. “One hundred percent. She might settle for you though, you know,” he teased, making Timmy laugh with a wheeze.

“I’ve managed to dodge her all these years, no way am I ending my streak now!”

Armie wiped the spilled champagne from his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Too bad. Now neither of us will get a kiss at midnight.”

“You could always just kiss me.” It just left Timmy’s lips.

“What?”

“Nothing, never mind.” Timmy grabbed the bottle back from Armie and tilted it up to drink from it. It was already much lighter than on the first round.

“No, I mean, I heard you, but… You were kidding, right?”

“Obviously,” Timmy said, embarrassed.

“No, no, that’s not your face when you’re… Oh.” Armie stopped. “Oh. You actually meant it.”

Timmy swallowed slowly, trying to buy more time. He shook his head. “Forget it. It really wasn’t…”

“No, I want to know if you really meant it.”

“What does it matter? It’s not like we’re actually going to…” Timmy shrugged with a nervous tick, fidgeting, turning away.

“Timmy?” Armie’s voice was demanding. He reached over to take the bottle from Timmy and placed it carefully on the steel platform of the fire escape.

_“Two minutes!”_

Timmy squeezed his eyes shut and cringed. “Maybe.”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe I meant it?”

Armie rubbed his chin. A faint voice in his head said this would probably create problems later on, but right now he was too buzzed to care. “Okay, fine. I'll do it.”

“Wha–”

“You heard me. I will kiss you at midnight. But that's it then, okay?”

Timmy was speechless.

_“One minute!”_

It was the longest minute of their lives.

Neither of them said anything, and Timmy didn’t know where to look. He wondered if it was really going to be as good as he remembered. It had been two and a half years, after all. Maybe he remembered it all wrong. Maybe it wouldn’t make his knees weak anymore.

He hadn’t felt that way since that final night of shooting in Bergamo, when Armie had kissed him for the last time and obviously he hadn’t kissed him since. Not that Timmy hadn’t tried to get him to. But those had all been subtle attempts; nothing more than vague suggestions to see if Armie would take the bait. He hadn’t. And why would he have, they were just friends, right?

Armie, on the other hand, cursed himself for having agreed to go along with this. He had been so good so far, always keeping his hands to himself when Timmy drunkenly cuddled him; always deflecting when there was a joke that he wasn’t sure had been a joke at all.

In particular, he had been so proud of the time in Toronto. They had had so much fun being together again after the long summer apart, and after their night of partying, Timmy had stumbled onto the back seat of their car blindingly drunk and landed right on Armie’s lap.

They had both laughed but Timmy had made no effort to move, and they had been alone, so Armie had just held onto him. But hopped up on the adrenaline of a premiere weekend gone well, the boy had barely sat still for a second and Armie had felt a delicious bulge growing in his already tight pants every time Timmy had nudged and rubbed against him.

Yet, Armie had done the right thing and told the car to drop Timmy off at his hotel before Armie had continued to his own. It had taken him less than five minutes to get himself off in the shower and afterwards he had wondered if Timmy sometimes did those things on purpose.

_“3…2...1… Happy New Year!”_

As the first verses of _Auld Lang Syne_ started to echo from the party inside, Armie’s heart was pounding in his throat but he held on to his promise. He grabbed Timmy’s face, ghosting over his lips for a moment as if trying to decide whether the last step was worth it. This could take them into uncharted territory.

Timmy was the one who finally couldn’t take the anticipation anymore and, clutching the lapels of Armie’s parka, crashed their lips together.

It was the least New Year’s type of a kiss either of them had ever had.

Not the least bit friendly, far from a sweet courtesy gesture. Instead, it immediately turned into a passionate, finally-I-get-to-do-this kiss that turned all their breaths into sighs and moans.

The night air in Manhattan was freezing but their mouths were warm, and concentrating on sucking on Timmy’s bottom lip, Armie pushed him clumsily against the railing, never losing contact. They stumbled on the champagne bottle and it rolled down the stairs of the fire escape, shattering when it hit the platform below them. Neither of them noticed; they were too busy licking into each other’s mouths, gently pulling lips between teeth, sucking on smooth tongues.

The song was long over and had been replaced by the regular party chatter when they finally came up for air.

“What the hell was that?” Timmy managed to ask, lips swollen and nose red from the cold. He was a little dizzy and had to keep clutching Armie’s coat to hold himself up because his knees were giving in.

“I have no idea.” Armie was breathless, leaning his forehead on Timmy’s. The air between them smelled like champagne and whatever Timmy had been drinking earlier.

Armie lifted his gaze from Timmy’s bitten lips to his eyes and felt something building low inside him when he heard himself ask: “Wanna do it again?”

Timmy nodded feverishly and mumbled _Happy fucking New Year to me_ before surging up to find Armie’s lips again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and Happy New Year everyone! You can find me on tumblr at: [angel-in-new-york-city](http://angel-in-new-york-city.tumblr.com/)


End file.
